Are you ready for what’s NOW as well as what could be NEXT? Reminds me of a Bob Dylan ballad...

Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You'll be drenched to the bone

For the times they are a-changin'

The times, they are indeed a-changin'. Who would've thought that in the last few years the mobile computer experience would change so drastically. Who would've thought Android would take the market by storm in such a way as to sway an entire industry to adopt new ways of doing things? New UI, New UX, new expectations of how a mobile computer is supposed to behave in the hands of a user... All this stuff we take for granted today is so vastly different than it was a short time ago. Then again, when you really think about it, this shift is almost identical to something we saw about 12-13 years ago when the Enterprise Mobile Computing market started to trend away from DOS-based devices to the devices that supported the beginnings of WindowsCE, PocketPC, and Palm (remember when Palm OS was really cool?). Times were a-changin' back then - times are a-changin now.

What drove all that back then?

Why did an industry change from DOS as an OS to go to PPC, Palm, WindowsCE, and WindowsMobile?

Basically, it's the same thing that's driving us now. The answer my friends is CONSUMER INFLUENCE – the influence of the cool consumer gadget in the hands of folks like you and me who just love to figure out how to take the ‘new shiny thing’ and use it to help make our work life just a little bit better. My friend and colleague @Bruce Willins has a better way of mashing Consumer Influence together to create the term CONFLUENCE - as in the coming together of the consumer side of experience with the needs of the Enterprise. Pretty clever, huh?

Anyways, here’s the sticking point: this undertow of change still remains as the constant. There’s always going to be the next ‘better’, the next ‘new shiny’, the next ‘great idea’ that someone is going to pull in from their experience as a consumer and make it work in the Enterprise. We’re simply at yet another inflection point – a point of change where this confluence is moving us to the big “What’s Next”.

Consider these interesting facts to put this discussion into perspective:

Right now, MSI is placing bets on Android as a way to deliver on the platform expectations driven by the changing times, yet still maintaining a very close eye on Microsoft and what they’re doing with WE8.1H (as well as their new shiny stuff too) – not to mention some far-horizon things going on around the industry. In fact, out of the many iterations of new Enterprise mobile devices coming from Motorola Solutions this year, more than half of them were based on Android, with the remainder still supporting legacy WinMo and CE7. Still vigilant on What's Next moving forward.

From a developer standpoint, times are a-changin' as well. We thirst for additional knowledge about the big "What's Next". We’ve had quite an uptick in interest from the dev community on getting to know what some of these platform directions mean to them. From a developer standpoint, 48% of attendees that have registered for AppForum2014 so far are also attending the Android Bootcamp pre-day session whereas, 30% of have registered for RhoMobile Bootcamp pre-day session – all in order to be better prepared to code for the big “What’s Next”

This AppForum is a great opportunity to learn more about the many changes happening in the Enterprise Mobile Computing market and what it means to you. Don't miss out! This is a developer event focused on application programmers that want to explore how to use the latest/greatest programming tools and utilities that support the latest/greatest line of Enterprise Class mobile computers coming from MSI. Tell your friends and coworkers that develop applications for Motorola Solutions' devices that this is the event to attend to be ready for developing apps on the latest platforms!